In these busy days of live service multiplayer games it’s always good to have a few singleplayer shooters on your radar, and today a new FPS was announced from VG Entertainment, headed up by former Stalker: Call of Pripyat dev Ruslan Didenko.
Forest Reigns is an ’emergent’ FPS set in a post-apocalyptic Paris not ravaged by war or radiation but plantlife. The City of Light has been reclaimed by nature: vines choke the lamp posts, greenery grows up the sides of buildings, grass covers the asphalt, and a massive, twisted tree trunk winds itself around La Tour Eiffel. Mother Nature is back and she seems pretty pissed off.
You’re there too, with some high-tech weaponry and a few tricks to turn these weird sentient plants into your allies. In this gameplay trailer secured by IGN, we see a few brief firefights against enemy agents where the player uses all that invasive greenery to their advantage.
Popping a round into a giant root causes it to expand, giving the player cover to crouch behind while shooting. Glowing orange orbs also sprout from the trunk which, when shot, will explode, burning your enemies. Shooting another type of plant causes it to react by blasting out spores, which appears to be the only way to injure some of the heavily armored boars patrolling Paris’ streets. We also see exploding fruit chucked like grenades, tangling vines ensnaring enemy soldiers, and other weird plant-based hijinx.
“It isn’t just part of the environment—it’s a conscious entity with its own desires and intentions. Interact with it to reveal its mysteries, use it for defeating enemies, or face its wrath as it reacts to your choices,” says the Steam page. “Resources are scarce, and danger is constant. Craft, scavenge, and plan ahead. Adapt to this green new world or become natural selection’s next victim.”
It looks kinda trippy, like Atomic Heart meets Stalker, and the nature-ravaged city is beautifully imagined, from the Eiffel Tower to the Arc de Triomphe to several other French landmarks I should probably know the names of. There’s no word on a release date for Forest Reigns, but here’s the official website.